Saturday, 22 September 2012

I (do not) Love Macarons

Last year in August a lovely friend of mine bought me Hisako
Ogita’s book I Love Macarons. It was
a very lovely gesture but one year later these little meringues are still the
bane of my existence! Seriously. I’m
not sure how those little, sugary, pretty pieces of confectionery can cause me
so much heartache, but they do!

My main problems were that they either cracked, or those
signature macaron ‘feet’ were distinctly absent. I tried every tip I could find
in the book and then took to the internet and meticulously studied macaron
troubleshooting posts on numerous blogs. But I was still failing miserably.

Luckily, I have lots of people around me who don’t mind
devouring what I think to be baking disasters, and none of those had any
complaints about how they tasted. So that was at least a plus!

But I was still determined to make them look perfect and I
came across this blog: http://bravetart.com/
It was full of really lighthearted and clever posts about macarons with the
main theme being not to worry! Not to worry if you chuck all the sugar in at once,
or if you haven’t aged the egg whites. So I thought I’d give it a go.

And the damn things still didn’t look right!!!!

Although this time I wasn’t so worried because they were
definitely the best batch I’ve done and, more importantly, I think I know where
I went wrong. I still didn’t get my feet and the tops weren’t as shiny as I
would have liked but I was so worried about over mixing the batter, I think I under
mixed it, meaning I didn’t do enough ‘macaronage’, which was always going to prevent
the feet from forming.

I did want to immediately make another lot and
test this theory but I find them so time consuming I refrained. But I feel my
luck might be about to change…*

The fillings are vanilla, coffee and chocolate buttercream.

(*If it doesn’t change I may decide to pretend macarons don’t
exist and cut them completely from my life and perhaps the world.)